Last night on XM, Claire played a tape of the ESPN conference call with the media from yesterday afternoon. From their responses to questions about missed restarts or failing to follow-up on drivers not in the Chase, it was clear they certainly have their "spin" down pat. Executive Producer Rich Fineberg fielded many of the questions. When asked by a reporter about the number of missed restarts, particularly at Richmond, the ESPN folks (even Rusty) claimed they'd missed "just a handfull" of restarts. What a crock! I counted at least 5 on Saturday night alone! Rusty even had the corporate spin down claiming, "but we gave the viewers the last 50 laps commercial-free, so it was a good tradeoff for them." Uh, let me decide that, Rusty.

Claire had lots of listeners on Monday who complained that ABC never showed if Jamie McMurray was alright after the big wreck where his window net wasn't shown as being down. Fans complained that ABC never even bothered having an interview with him or even telling us he was okay. So Claire asked for an explanation from the ESPN folks. Fineberg side-stepped the question, saying "well we had a lot of stories involving the Chase and I don't really know why we didn't even verbally assure the viewers he was okay..." How lame...

The ESPN folks also had some "great" news about how they will now have a two-line ticker so that viewers will be able to see where the 12 drivers in Chase are in the points at all times. Oh goody...more things to clutter up my screen.

Mike Mulhern was involved in the teleconference and has an article today on some of the questions posed to Fineberg (on ratings and stuff like that):

For once, some good news for ESPN with the high ratings on ABC. But how long could that last, with the opposition for the next weeks being NFL football? And there's also the final round of the golf playoffs this coming weekend, featuring Tiger Woods.